Kavanagh Quotes & Sayings

It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities - life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked. — Patrick Kavanagh

A sweeping statement is the only statement worth listening to. The critic without faith gives balanced opinions, usually about second-rate writers. — Patrick Kavanagh

Among your earthiest words, the angels stray... — Patrick Kavanagh

How strange a thing like that happens to a man. He dabbles in something and does not realise that it is his life. — Patrick Kavanagh

Natural life, lived naturally as it is lived in the countryside, has none of that progress which is the base of happiness. Men and women in rural communities can be compared to a spring that rises out of a rock and spreads in irregular ever-widening circles. But the general principle is static. — Patrick Kavanagh

God cannot catch us. Unless we stay in the unconscious room. Of our hearts. — Patrick Kavanagh

There is nothing as dead and as damned as an important thing. The things that really matter are casual, insignificant little things. — Patrick Kavanagh

This isn't the road home. This is a road littered with questions that will inevitably lead to an answer. — Meryl S. Kavanagh

Do you know how hard it is to paint kindness?" She leaned her hip against a desk in the corner of the room, still watching me. "It's the only part of a person I really want to capture. Everything else seems to get lost in layers of deception or defensiveness. But not kindness. You can't hide it. And people either are or they aren't. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Hearing my brother's words coming out of Henry, this stranger in a strange town, made me feel wild with all the loss - wild and wired with no place to put those feelings. — Laura Anderson Kurk

The keynote of simple folk is bad manners, familiarity. They intrude on one's private soul. — Patrick Kavanagh

What appears in newspapers is often new but seldom true. — Patrick Kavanagh

Meg," he whispered. "It wouldn't be real love if there weren't the possibility for another response to him. If we couldn't choose not to love him, then our love would be empty. That's why there's evil in this world, because there's free choice in this world. He allows the one to prove the other. — Laura Anderson Kurk

I'd never seen him bare-chested. For the first time, he seemed vulnerable to me. His smooth, tight skin wrapped around the long muscles he'd developed over a lifetime of hard work.
He found a shallow spot and sat, settling me onto his lap, holding my back to his chest. I couldn't stop shaking and it had nothing to do with the water or with being half dressed in a cave with a boy.
"Nothing else matters," Henry said in my ear. "I'm here. Start at the beginning. — Laura Anderson Kurk

On the stem of memory imaginations blossom. — Patrick Kavanagh

There is something wrong with a work of art if it can be understood by a policeman. — Patrick Kavanagh

Patrick Kavanagh put it, preparing for life rather than living it. — John O'Donohue

I could've gone on and on but the truth was all that mattered.
My brother died because someone was jealous. — Laura Anderson Kurk

When Dad was in the middle of a description of the hotel's laundry facility, I interrupted. "Why haven't you told me today, like you do every day, that Mom's going to be better soon?"
He looked up then. His gaze locked with mine and held a promise that no matter what he said or didn't say, he and I would ride this out together. "I haven't told you that today, Meg, because I don't know. — Laura Anderson Kurk

I smiled at him. Not even Wyatt would have known how to be this honorable when talking about a girl that had hurt him. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Camus and Henry waved to me from that muddy truck. They both wanted me to get over myself.
So, this was me, getting over myself. And it was about time. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Macmillan's rejection had left him very downcast ... Patrick Swift was invited to peruse the contents and decided that the poems should be published. — Patrick Kavanagh

Poetry is not Irish or any other nationality; and when writers such as Messrs. Clarke, Farren and the late F. R. Higgins pursue Irishness as a poetic end, they are merely exploiting incidental local colour. — Patrick Kavanagh

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think what a waste of energy. If people want to believe in this god, or that god, that's fine by me, believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself. — Conor McGregor

A poet is never one of the people. He is detached, remote, and the life of small-time dances and talk about football would not be for him. He might take part but could not belong. — Patrick Kavanagh

He was in his secret room in the heart now. Having entered he could be bold. A man hasn't to be on his best behavior in Heaven; he can kick the furniture around. He can stoop down and picks up lumps of mortality without being born again to die. — Patrick Kavanagh

You're kidding, right? The whole town will know where we are just by the idle on that thing."
He feigned a look of shock. "That thing is a 1966 GTO. It has a name, okay? It's Mack - as in 'to mack on women.' I rebuilt it last year, and I was told the engine makes girls hot."
"Someone actually used those words? Is it true?"
"TBD," he said.
"You're goofy. Let's ride in my Jeep. Its name is Jeep."
Quinn chuckled. "Kavanagh has a smart mouth. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Hmmm. What you're saying is that you've never been kissed? He picked at a string on the blanket under us. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Quit worrying so much about the boards and nails of your life. Focus on the stuff that lasts. He glanced through the window toward the glowing light of the kitchen where Meg and my mom were laughing about something. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Young writers should keep out of pubs and remember that the cliche way of the artistic life is a lie. — Patrick Kavanagh

We all think when we're young that we want excitement and highs and passion. To hell with ordinary."
I smiled and she chuckled. "But when we find ourselves in these adult bodies," she said. "When we wise up a little, or get slapped in the face by life, we realize we just want all things to be equal." She put the heels of her hands together near her heart like the Yoga prayer position. "And we want to understand them better. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Good. Until tomorrow, perhaps." I cant just leave. I have to let her know I'm interested. "Oh, and Anastasia? I'm glad Miss Kavanagh couldn't do the interview." Delighting in her stunned expression, I sling the bag over my shoulder and saunter out of the store.
Yes, against my better judgement, I want her. Now I have to wait ... fucking wait ... again. — E.L. James

Malice is only another name for mediocrity. — Patrick Kavanagh

Death was in the atmosphere. Only the yellow weeds in the meadow were excited by living. — Patrick Kavanagh

Sometimes, in the stillness of my room, my mom's voice came to me, repeating things she'd said for months. Like, "My skin is melting off my face, isn't it?" And, "My whole body feels dead from the crap they're pouring into me. Do I look green to you?" And, "When I'm naked, I can see my heart beating. — Laura Anderson Kurk

I learned during the three weeks after my surgery that when you are in rehab, willpower and determination are key. — Peter Kavanagh

I pretended to be a Cheyenne guide. I pretended to be a prairie woman. I pretended Henry was my old-timey husband taking me to our new homestead. I leaned down and patted Trouble's neck. "Good boy," I said. "Trusty steed. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Let's go to town," Jo said. "Take me to eat dinner at the hotel."
I sucked in a breath and stared at her for a minute. Here she sat, her hair still wet although neatly braided, wearing an old Kiss sweatshirt, the one with the red mouth and tongue, red sweatpants, and ridiculous red pumps with black scuffs on the toes and heels.
And she wanted me to take her to the Hotel Wyoming, where the rich tourists hung out. I smiled. Because it was possibly the greatest thing I'd ever heard.
"Yeah, let's go to the hotel. Grab your purse and I'll find your coat. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Oh- and Anastasia, I'm glad Miss Kavanagh couldn't do the interview. — E.L. James

In the beginning, there was the earth, formless and empty. Darkness hung over the surface of the deep. And then there was light. It spilled over the waters, vast and powerful, and its creation severed the unity that had come before. This light was a separate entity from the darkness. Something novel and cruelly different. The spirits called it "day." Its opposite was called "night." Between them was evening and morning - the First Day. This division marked the end of peace in the universe. Everything has been pretty much fucked up since then. — S.M. Reine

Uncommon anxiety came to us in common hours when other people were doing mundane things like taking out the trash or checking their phones. But there was nothing to be done for this. We couldn't change who we were or what had happened. — Laura Anderson Kurk

The exciting quality about Joyce is that when you read him, you are not told of the large public issues that were agitating the minds of politicians and journalists on those days. Joyce is interested in the mind of a man who has put five shillings on a horse. — Patrick Kavanagh

In its truest manifestation, where it gives judgments, poetry is super-luxury. It would be interesting to see what would happen to a High Court judge if he were forced to follow the true poetic formula, doing the job for love, being forced into pubs for relief. — Patrick Kavanagh

Because we bring so little is no reason to bring nothing. — P. J. Kavanagh

It's the broken that find a way, because the cracks, although deep, let out as much light as the darkness they let in — Tom Kavanagh

The ice cold fear I'd felt, not knowing if Wyatt was alive, pressed into the wall with other girls and surrounded by guys who were unspeakably brave, hit my body again in a wave. This was trauma - the gift that keeps on giving. — Laura Anderson Kurk

I want to reveal in a simple way the usual - and unusual - life of the city; the corporation workman, the busmen, policemen, the civil servants, the theatres, Moore Street and also, what occupies so large a place in Dublin's life, the literary and artistic. — Patrick Kavanagh

Publication there [in Nimbus] was to prove a turning point ... The publication of his next volume of verse, Come Dance with Kitty Stobling, was to be directly linked to the mini-collection in Nimbus, and his Collected Poems (1964) — Patrick Kavanagh

Grayson noticed me next to the lockers. He pointed at me then held his arms out magnanimously. "You're welcome, new girl," he said. "I just saved you from having to find a nice way to say no to the leg dragger. — Laura Anderson Kurk

He'd had to fold his long legs into his desk. His boots had seen better days, and his jeans unraveled in a curiously irresistible way at the bottom. He didn't look like anyone I'd ever seen before. He reminded me of an actor in an old Western - Rock Hudson in Giant - all dark intensity. — Laura Anderson Kurk

...at least that would explain the weeping and moaning emanating from the woman's bedroom at night. It woke her regularly and created an illusion which suggested disembodied spirits roamed the corridors. And if there was one thing Melba would not have it was disembodied spirits roaming the corridors... — Brian Kavanagh

I think of Dermot Healy as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh. — Seamus Heaney

I turned my ear toward the door because I heard him breathing. When you're alone and afraid, the simple sound of the steady in and out of air being drawn by another person is good medicine. — Laura Anderson Kurk

frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair - it just won't behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward — E.L. James

The audience swelled to six in the end and we all huddled in a corner. — P. J. Kavanagh

She didn't see me because of the reflection on the store windows, and she wouldn't know me in this car anyway. In fact, she probably wouldn't know me with shaggy hair and the beginnings of a beard. So I sat for a minute, watching her dusting bookshelves, either talking to herself or singing. Her feather duster had become a prop in whatever scene she had going.
She looked heart-stoppingly, breathtakingly beautiful, my Meg. — Laura Anderson Kurk

He leaned toward me and said his name like he was sharing a secret and it made me think he probably kept a lot of secrets. His smile was sweet and his teeth the tiniest bit crooked. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Ay - 'The Green Fool' business, the libel action over the head of it - did me a lot of damage. It destroyed the momentum. — Patrick Kavanagh

We are not alone in our loneliness, others have been here and known griefs we thought our special own ... — Patrick Kavanagh

Next to the first Henry and Meg, Henry had written, "Promise?"
Well, that genie's out of the bottle and there's no stuffing her back in. — Laura Anderson Kurk

On the best nights, he'd appear outside the bookstore window and wait for me to unlock the door. He usually hadn't had time to shower between doing things with cattle and horses and coming to find me, and he looked older than us and stronger than us. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Women, never have got full credit for thei bravery, they sacrifice everything to life — Patrick Kavanagh

Parochialism and provincialism are direct opposites. A provincial is always trying to live by other people's loves, but a parochial is self-sufficient. — Patrick Kavanagh

Letting the facts speak for themselves is an immoral principle when we all know that facts and figures can be selected to prove anything. — Patrick Kavanagh

I recognized Meg's swirly handwriting and crooked my index finger into the side of the envelope to rip it open. There was no letter. Just a picture.
A picture of Meg holding a picture of me.
The word HOME echoed through my body like a rifle shot. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Publicity's a cancer. It eats out a man - till there's nothing but a shell left. — Patrick Kavanagh

I'd known cruelty in a school - cruelty that would keep these amateurs up all night. But this kind of scene - crowds batting around a person because they thought he was weak - happened to be my personal trigger. — Laura Anderson Kurk

I found I could only glance at him for tiny moments and then I had to look away. He was perfect enough to hurt my feelings for a long time, and I wanted to let him. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Is there one in particular, Tennyson?" Henry said, ducking out from under her arm. "I could arrange a meeting."
"Yeah, the one from Texas ... what's his name?"
"That would be Dylan. But he's a nice guy and you'd break his heart. He dropped out of Texas A&M to come up here and saddle bum around with my horses year-round. Knowing your dad, I think you'd better be looking for a pre-med honors student."
"Leave my dad out of this. — Laura Anderson Kurk

The world of Katherine Kavanagh is very clear, very black and white. Not the intangible, mysterious, vague hues of gray that color my world. Welcome to my world. — E.L. James

Here was what I wanted to happen when I walked through the door after my first real date and my first ever kiss. I wanted my mom to say, "Dear God, Meg, you're glowing. Sit and tell me about this boy. He let you borrow his jacket? That's so adorable." Instead, I came off the high of that day by writing a letter to my dead brother and doing yoga between my twin beds, trying to forget my absent mother. — Laura Anderson Kurk

All of the emotions that hit people at times like these, all of them, were coursing through us both like a secret we couldn't tell. Because if we said everything we were thinking and feeling right then ... if we laid it all out for one another ... we might not like the way the words strung together. Or the way fear and hope and bitterness and love mashed up into one big mess in the pits of our stomachs. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Life in cities is not a spring but a river, or rather, a water main. It progresses like a novel, artificially. — Patrick Kavanagh

Most kids grow sullen and angry when they're working through issues, but Thanet mustered up another kind of bull-headed strength. The kind that sees beyond circumstances to what really matters. How could anyone hurt a soul that lovely? — Laura Anderson Kurk

My advice is this, do whatever pleases yourself. These things don't matter. What does matter is that if you have anything worth while in you, any talent, you should deliver it. Nothing must turn you from that. — Patrick Kavanagh

This history sets forth the only true account of the adventures of a daring Tipperary man named Darby O'Gill among the Fairies of Sleive na mon. These adventures were first related to me by Mr. Jerry Murtaugh a reliable car driver who goes between Kilcuny and Ballinderg. He is a first cousin of Darby O'Gill's own mother. — Herminie Templeton Kavanagh

Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance. — Patrick Kavanagh

Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of artistic expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb. — Patrick Kavanagh

He read me Whitman, of whom he was very fond, and also Emerson.
I didn't like Whitman, and said so. I always thought him a writer who tried to bully his way to prophecy. Of Emerson at the time I had no opinions to offer. I found him out later to be a sugary humbug. His transcendental bunkum sickened me. — Patrick Kavanagh

Elise didn't hesitate to punch her hand into a man's chest to pulverize a demon eyeball, but a batch of burned cookies could bring her to her knees. — S.M. Reine

My chin is weak. I find it hard to make decisions. For years I had been caught between the two stools of security on the land and rich-scented life on the exotic islands of literature.
I wasn't really a writer. I had seen a strange beautiful light on the hills and that was all. — Patrick Kavanagh

A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men. — Patrick Kavanagh

Every moment of our lives we make choices. Most we don't even know we're making, they're so dull or routine or automatic. Some are beyond explanation - like my mom choosing Wyatt's memory over Dad and me. — Laura Anderson Kurk

The position is: the Gaelic language is no longer the native language; it is dead, yet food is being brought to the graveyard. — Patrick Kavanagh

It was an oddly satisfying idea to feel bereft as I left my mother this time. We only feel bereft when we're deprived of something meaningful. — Laura Anderson Kurk

I dabbled in verse and it became my life — Patrick Kavanagh

The first thing I needed, possibly the only thing, was to kiss her and I did, for as long as I could. I let us both breathe for a minute, and I perched her on a counter so I could touch the face I'd missed so much.
I poured every bit of frustration, anger, sadness, and worry into that kiss. Meg understood and received it all, pushing her fingers into my hair and giggling against my lips. I didn't care that anybody passing by could be watching us through the window, or that I could fall right there and sleep for a week. — Laura Anderson Kurk

In the country places of Ireland, writing is held in certain awe: a writer was a dangerous man from whom they instinctively recoiled. — Patrick Kavanagh

Without the baggy clothes or oven mitts, she looked less like a cute young housewife and more like something that had crawled out of Hell. — S.M. Reine

The sun rose and set in a land of dreams whether the clocks where right or wrong. — Patrick Kavanagh

Yeats, protected to some extent by the Nationalistic movement, wrote out of a somewhat protected world, and so his work does not touch life deeply. — Patrick Kavanagh

It often occurs to me that we love most what makes us miserable. In my opinion the damned are damned because they enjoy being damned. — Patrick Kavanagh

It was the first time I discovered that some girls actually sneak out of the house during slumber parties and meet up with boys. I would've never known if I hadn't gone to the bathroom at midnight and caught Macy and Adrienne climbing through the bathroom window. They had on eyeliner, perfume, and cut-off shorts. Their only goodbye a glare that promised retribution if I didn't keep my mouth shut. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Work is what you have to do to pay rent. Life is what happens when your shift is over. — Marianne Kavanagh

it is raining blessings, and we all stand under our large umbrellas. come out and let yourself be rained upon! — Pascale Kavanagh

Wine and women do not go with song. Alcohol is the worst enemy of the imagination. — Patrick Kavanagh

And it's nagging at you, but you can't quite put your finger on it? It's like that, all the time. Just this feeling of wrongness. Like the world doesn't make sense any more without him in it.' A — Emma Kavanagh

But Quinn held the fuzzy handcuffs in his hands, looking them over closely, and he smiled. Oh, hey, did you want to keep these for when your invisible boyfriend returns from his fake vacation? — Laura Anderson Kurk

I love words! I believe in their power to soothe, to comfort, to heal. I believe in their ability to inspire, to capture the unthinkable, to help us cope with the unimaginable. — Emma Kavanagh

He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping," he said, quietly this time. "He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given up when she opened her eyes and whispered his name. — Laura Anderson Kurk